Belated Birthdays
by Yuuki Miyaka
Summary: The G-boys celebrate Wufei's birthday.


Standard Disclaimers apply.  
  
Rated PG for mild language.  
  
Belated Birthdays  
A Gundam Wing Story  
by: Yuuki Miyaka  
  
He was getting heartily sick of the snickering. He expected a certain amount of mocking and teasing from that braided idiot, but Quatre?! He'd come to expect some degree of politeness from the Arabian pilot, and the last he'd checked, politeness did not include whispered conversations that stopped the moment he walked into the room, or sidelong glances accompanied by mocking laughter. Only . . . it didn't *sound* like mocking laughter. It actually sounded rather excited and promising. But that was foolish, and whatever he was, Chang Wufei was *not* foolish!  
He stoically endured it all for two weeks. What else was he supposed to do? Duo would never stop if asked and would most likely pretend ignorance of the matter. Trowa might aid him in approaching Quatre, but he'd be no use when it came to that braided fool. And so, after a long period of consideration and a *lot* of katas to clear his mind, Wufei decided that the best idea would be to just ignore the whole matter. If it started interfering with the missions and their efficiency, he could trust Heero to take the direct approach, as always.  
Meanwhile . . .  
  
"It'll be great!" Duo crowed, beaming at Quatre. "He'll never know what hit him. But . . . I think this year it should just be the five of us," he nodded decisively. "Inviting anyone else would just make things way too hard. And with just us five, we can hold it in one of your safehouses and it'll be easy to deal with all of the repercussions."  
"Repercussions?" Quatre piped, curious. "You make it sound like a bad thing, Duo-kun!"  
"Nah, nah. But there're some things he's just gotta take a full day ta deal with's all." The other two Gundam pilots listened to the plotting and exchanged a silent glance. The four sat crosslegged on the floor of Quatre's den, looking thoughtful.  
"I think you should be the one to approach him, Duo-kun," Quatre said finally, his sweet voice solemn with the thought. "And I'm not sure precisely when to plan for."  
"It has to be the right day," Duo pointed out. "If it isn't, then there's no point in doing any of it."  
"There's no point to it anyway," Heero grumbled, and Quatre looked at him.  
"Heero-san! Of course there is." Then, as though realizing who he was speaking to, Quatre began grasping for a reason behind the whole scheme. "It'll make him happy. And a happy soldier fights more efficiently. Don't you agree, Duo-kun?"  
Duo nodded emphatically, and Heero simply grunted, giving Trowa another long and meaningful stare. This time, however, the two cheerful pilots caught the exchange and dragged their respective partners off to explain a thing or two about the way the world worked.  
  
"Hey, Wu-man! Whatcha up to?" Wufei silently snarled at Duo. The last thing he needed was the cheerful pilot bothering him in the middle of his sword-dances. He turned smoothly, sunlight glinting off the metal of the blade as it cut a graceful arc toward Duo's throat. Duo's eyes goggled comically, and he froze. But Wufei was certainly good enough to stop the blade before it cut his ally, and he did so, the blade finishing its flashing, silver arc a mere three centimeters from Duo's unprotected neck.   
One eyebrow arched sardonically, Wufei regarded the other pilot. "You wanted something, Maxwell?" For a long minute, Duo stared at Wufei in shock, and the Chinese pilot thought he'd finally found a way to shut the chatterbox up. To his dismay, however, Duo rallied fairly quickly.  
"Sugoi!" he said. "That was cool! How'd you manage to stop so quickly? Have you been practicing long? Can you show me how to do that?"  
"Urusai!" Wufei snapped, scowling. When Duo stopped talking, Wufei's scowl darkened a bit. "What do you want, Maxwell?"  
"Oh! Right!" Duo paused, seeming to gather his thoughts. "Quatre asked me to tell you that lunch's ready and you should hurry up. Ahmed made something special for you, I think."  
The scowl faded somewhat, but remained on his face. "He must be trying the recipe I mentioned," Wufei mused, then seemed to catch himself. Why did it always seem so easy to speak in front of the American pilot?, Wufei wondered irritably, and to cover his lapse, he said roughly, "With any luck it will teach even you some taste, Maxwell."  
"C'mon, then," Duo grinned. "I'll walk back ta the house with ya, and you can tell me about it." Wufei scowled again at the way Duo simply invited himself along, but he said nothing, merely sliding his sword into its sheathe with a practiced move and turning on his heel to head toward the safehouse. He heard Duo's footsteps start up a moment later, and suddenly the black-garbed boy was walking beside him. He tried to tell himself that he minded, that he wanted time alone, but a different thought wormed its way into his consciousness. He *liked* the feel of someone beside him. Was this what it always felt like to have a partner? Is this why the other four had split into teams of two early on? Was it why they seemed better able to work together?  
Shaking himself from his reverie, his scowl deepened. It was nothing more than a passing fancy, thank you, and he had little enough time for such things. And anything these other boys could do, he could handle as well, and just as well as they could. He ignored Duo's cheerful babbling, reflecting grimly that one of the best ways to destroy OZ *had* to be tying them up and letting Duo chatter at them until they begged for mercy. The image wove itself upon his mind until he suddenly looked up to find that they'd reached the house and Duo stood at the door, grinning at him. He brushed past Duo, his arm and shoulder just touching Duo's chest and stomach as he moved into the house.   
The touch caught him off-guard, though he would never let on. He couldn't possibly let the other boys know that he'd begun to think of them as anything more than allies. Even were he foolish enough to believe they might welcome his friendship, he knew he didn't have it in him to preserve such a relationship. Oh, with Quatre it wouldn't be too difficult. The blond boy had a smile and kind word for everyone. Even Treize. And Duo, with his manic personality, would probably enjoy the change in status. It was the other two, Heero and Trowa, that he couldn't be sure of. And he wouldn't gamble. Not like that. So he forced down the initial reaction he'd felt to the brief brushing and hurried into the dining room.  
What he found there floored him. Paper decorations adorning the walls, the table set in Quatre's very best china. The foods laid out along the one wall were some of Wufei's favorite dishes, and at the end of the long line of foods was a cake adorned with the words, "Happy Birthday, Wufei!" The cake seemed to be chocolate on chocolate, and Wufei winced inwardly. Yet another weakness, one they shouldn't have known about. But the words stopped him. He turned wondering eyes to Quatre, who smiled sweetly, then Duo, who grinned manically, clapping. From Duo, he looked at Heero, whose usual scowl was softened--barely--by a ghost of a smile. And Trowa, who did not smile, but whose always-dispassionate gaze now registered happiness.   
"What is this?" he asked, trying to make his voice harsh and failing. Instead, there was a far-too-obvious tremble. Or at least it was too obvious to him. And instead of scowling, he found his mouth wanting to smile and his eyes wanting to water. Must be dust or something, he thought forcefully. It certainly wasn't tears!  
The other four boys grinned at each other and crowed, "Happy Birthday, Wufei!!!" Well, at least two of them crowed. In Heero's mouth it almost sounded like a challenge, and Wufei couldn't tell whether Trowa had actually spoken or merely moved his lips.   
Startled, Wufei said the first thing that came into his mind, paying no attention to what it was. "I have no birthday!" Realizing only afterward how that sounded, Wufei winced inwardly again and waited for Duo's mocking laughter. But Duo just stared at him for a long minute.  
"Damn man," he finally said with a low whistle. "Did they fuck your brain up as much as Heero's?" Heero snarled at Duo, but the braided pilot paid no attention. "Wu-man, everybody's got a birthday. It's the day you were *born*. And even if ya don't normally celebrate it, we needed the fun, man. C'mon, relax. It's just a little party. We even got you presents." Duo's voice went singsong on the last sentence, and Wufei found himself relaxing in response. There was no mocking, no cruel jokes at his expense. Only . . . only caring, true caring on the face of his friends. With a start, he examined that last thought. The idea made him smile. Friends . . . . And seeing Quatre's anxious face, and Duo's encouraging one, he nodded.   
Dinner passed in a blur of Duo-chatter, but Wufei enjoyed the incessant noise for once. They all seemed to enjoy it. When the cake was brought to him, he noted the sixteen candles and shook his head wryly. That would have been Duo's doing, of course. Somehow he hadn't noticed the American's attention to detail before this, but seeing it in such a light, Wufei couldn't help but appreciate it. He blew the candles out as they sang to him. That was an interesting experience, Wufei allowed. None of the voices melded together, and if you listened hard enough, you could hear Heero's growling under Duo's exuberant (and off-key) rendition. Trowa's singing was little more than a whisper, while Quatre's sweetly musical voice carried the rest.   
"Ne, Wu-man? Finish up your cake so you can open presents!" Duo demanded with a bright grin, pulling out a small, brightly-wrapped package from under his seat. Wufei wondered how he could have missed it, wondering even more when Quatre handed him another package, this one long and thin. Heero even handed him one, the wrapping nothing more than brown paper. That earned him a scowl from Duo. "Heero, man, ya don't know how ta have fun, do ya? You should've wrapped it with fun paper!!!"  
"It's all right, Maxwell," Wufei said quietly, surprising himself. "It reflects the giver, as a present should." He looked at the cards, chocolate cake forgotten, and noticed that Trowa's name was on the present Quatre had given him as well as Quatre's. He hadn't expected anything else, though.  
"Yo, Wu-man! Save my present for last!!!" Duo grinned, bouncing in his chair. Absently, Wufei wondered if all the excess energy was due to the amount of food the American pilot consumed at every meal, then looked over at Heero's gift. Finally, he picked it up gingerly, half-afraid it would be yanked from his hand. When he opened it, he was greeted with a cardboard box. He opened that, and found inside half a dozen different tools useful for repairing his Gundam. He looked up at the Perfect Soldier and was treated to a tiny smile.  
"It's a repair kit," Heero said quietly. "For ShenLong."  
"Thank you," Wufei said, just as quietly. Sable eyes locked with cobalt ones, a moment of friendship passing between the two of them before Wufei was pulled back to the present by Quatre's sweet voice urging him to look at the other presents. Wufei obliged, starting with the one that Quatre and Trowa had given him. The long, thin box turned out to contain a sword stunning in it's beauty. It was a functional beauty, Wufei realized with a start. This blade was meant to be used.  
Cradling it in shaking hands, Wufei lifted wide eyes to the two, and was rewarded with two smiles. "This . . ." he started, finding that he couldn't find the words to finish the thought. Surely they understood, though. They'd recognized the blade as perfect. They had to have recognized such craftsmanship.  
"Wu-man!!!" Duo's voice broke the moment, and Wufei reverently placed the blade before him lest he get caught up in the spell of it again. "Open mine! I wanna see your face!" Wufei tried to scowl at the braided boy, but found that after everything that had happened, he just couldn't. Instead, he reached for the thin box, opening it with graceful but shaking hands. And the gift inside definitely reflected the giver.  
"Maxwell, whatever possessed you to give me boxers?!" Wufei demanded. Duo grinned gleefully, then pouted when no nosebleed seemed forthcoming. "Black, silk boxers, at that?"  
"Well, duh, man! What else would Shinigami give as a present?!" Wufei nodded, but a small smile slipped onto his face despite the scowl he tried to keep in place. The gift would certainly have its planned effect. Wufei would think of Duo every time he wore them. And he would definitely wear them, if only to spite the other pilot.  
Eventually, the afternoon was over. Heero disappeared back to the hanger to work on Wing. Trowa and Quatre went to play a duet together. Duo had, thankfully, disappeared, leaving Wufei alone to practice his sword-dances. With his new blade. As he practiced, Wufei considered the afternoon. It was the first time he'd ever celebrated his birthday. It was the first time anyone had ever cared enough to think of it as a special occasion. That, in itself, was enough to bring Wufei to the edge of tears. But they were tears of gratitude at being granted such a gift as these four friends.   
"Ne, Wufei?" The Chinese pilot almost didn't recognize his name coming from Duo, but turned reflexively. "Whatcha thinkin' about?"  
Wufei started to brush Duo off, but stopped at the almost-wistful tone in the other boy's voice. "I was just thinking," he said quietly, "that no one has ever cared enough to celebrate my birthday before." He expected Duo to start laughing, or chattering, or something and was surprised to hear only silence for a minute.   
Duo leaned against a tree, looking thoughtful for a long time before finally speaking. "That really sucks, ya know? And I know how ya feel. I had people that cared enough, but no one knew when my birthday was. I was just a street rat, after all. But . . . I had fun today."  
Wufei digested that little bit of information in silence, knowing that Duo didn't speak of his past much, and never so solemnly. He finally looked up at the braided pilot with a small smile on his face. "This party . . . it was your doing, wasn't it?"  
"Well, Quatre did most of the party," Duo admitted. "I simply hacked into L5 to find out your birthday."  
Wufei was startled at that. He hadn't expected them to have gone to so much trouble for him. But they had, of course. And there was really only one thing he could do about it. "Duo?" he asked, smiling as the other pilot focussed on him for the first time. "Do you still not know when your birthday is?" Duo shook his head, a trifle warily, and Wufei's smile widened. "Then share mine." And he held out his hand in welcome.  
  
-Owari- 


End file.
